MMORPG: Review Part 2 - A Shroud of Confusion

As a followup to the first part of their review, MMORPG have posted additional thoughts on the game:
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/935/view/reviews/load/453/A-Shroud-of-Confusion.html

Some teasers:
- The point, however, is that at least in its current state, the game offers barely any enjoyable story based content and its strengths are solely to be found in the sandbox MMO aspects, but it doesn’t give good enough reasons to actually play the multiplayer mode, besides socializing.
- I can only repeat myself from the previous article and state that I really don’t need to have things handed to me on a silver plate. But if you are talking about old school gaming, back then we couldn’t look up everything in the internet. You were able to find out things within the game as an individual, even if it took some effort. My impression is that Shroud of the Avatar currently often does not give you that chance.

Check it out and see what Final Score he gives the game and then discuss below!

 

Meh.

 

I like this guy. Glad to hear some truth.

 

I could nit pick, but overall it's a fair review. Most of the readership at mmorpg.com would be hugely disappointed in SotA if they paid $45 and found it in its current state. The good news is that once Port officially declares the game "released", it might get an updated review.

 

Up until a few weeks ago, the only "advancement" in the game came from buying a higher pledge tier.
The next form of advancement is a gold grinding sandbox for the lot lottery.

The idea of a house / lot as a trophy case for accomplishments is a very good one. It's better than "level" in a Korean grinder, better than gear in WoW, better than the achievement systems found in many games.

But this goal just doesn't pull people through the content of the game very well.

 

Unfortunately that's an extremely fair review, just don't think the game is ready to be reviewed.

Port, you guys went on Steam too early and you went persistent too early. Gonna be hard to recover.

 

yeah, there was no internet back then, but im pretty sure these guys looked up stuff from the game magazine or BBS.

 

Here's my advice to this guy. 20 years from now when you look back and read your own review in retrospect, you may begin to understand how incredibly wrong you are.

 

This resonates for me:

" It seems to be very estranged from the original vision that was promised in the Kickstarter campaign and therefore in my impression fans who expected a successor to Ultima VII are those who are the most disappointed currently."

 

I agree with the review about 95%.

It's just too empty an experience at the moment for me to stay with it. I placed my house and feel like that was the main point of the game. I need quests and depth to hook me. I am not going to say it's a bad game because it's clearly not finished and I still believe they will get it right in time.

The four positions that they are looking to fill can't happen soon enough if you ask me. 10 million should get the current team some help in what is probably a crew that is stretched way too thin to practically pull this off.

 

The other thing mentioned in the review that bother me are load times. I only have an hour or so to play in the evenings, so when I spend 2+ minutes loading a scene it severely eats into my enjoyment and makes me frustrated.

 

Yes, I really hope they pick up some talented scene designers. While some of the scenes are nicely laid out, some of the towns are very uninspiring and look like they were put together without much thought or planning.

Steve Z is doing a good job on some of his scenes, like Port Graff.

 

That's the problem with pushing this game into persistence so early.

They should have waited to have at least the story down, which if you go through the 3 virtues get enough xp to go and do anything you wanted in the sandbox. And house placement should've been on hold until a couple months before release as an economy stimulant, not a jumping off point.

This article is completely correct, but the game isn't ready to be reviewed in the slightest, but being out in persistence means the clock began to tick on competition and everyone sees it as "if port is far enough to stop wiping and sustain a constant game which a consumer can buy then it's far enough to be discussed, reviewed and criticized."

 

I really don't mind it if people say they're disappointed. But I do mind when they rewrite history. If you go back to the Kickstarter, it literally says that it's BOTH the Ultimas and Ultima Online. To leave out the part about UO is just wrong and it allows the false narrative that somehow the Kickstarter "promise" was broken to continue. This guy should really be held accountable for that. He should retract that and apologize.

Infuriating...it literally took me 10 seconds to look this up and post it here. But this guy can't do that. He just makes it all up as he goes along.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/portalarium/shroud-of-the-avatar-forsaken-virtues-0/description

Shroud of the Avatar is the “spiritual successor” to Richard’s previous work in the FRP genre. Our primary objectives are to tell a story even more compelling than Ultimas IV-VII, create a virtual world more interactive than Ultima VII, develop deep rich multi-player capabilities beyond combat akin to Ultima Online, and offer a bold new approach to integrate them with “Selective Multi-Player”.

 

I think this review was more substantial than his first one, and agree with a lot of his points...

Although, I still think he's still leaving out a lot of positives about the game in its current state and not giving that enough time. There's no comments about world building or writing quality or dungeons or weather and astronomy, or the more interesting aspects of combat system like combos.

And I still don't get the putdowns of the graphics...though I admit a few things need definite polish (and I think the clunky UI helps make the graphics look worse than they are).

 

There's hardly any world or item interaction. Not even 100th of Ultima Online or Ultima VII -IX nor even what Underworld or Skyrim has for that matter. Lord British started all that and it's sad that this game doesn't have any.

 

Yep, they added some NPC to spice up Ardoris on this release. All the NPC's were the same. three or four different groups of "lovers" with identical clothing, shallow and dead end dialog.

Really? If I glue fake chrome pipes from Autozone onto my hood, does my car go faster?

Give me jesters, thieves, children, mothers, drunkards, tax collectors, rebels, fishermen, laborers, ...

Ardoris STILL has two NPC shops with no NPC's in them to sell anything.. move the "Carpenter" from above the bank and put him in his shop to start...

I know you guys are busy, but please don't glue chrome pipes on my car and call it better.

 

Paint it red....

 

I hope they paint it soon. While I love all the outfits available to pledges and on the add-on store. I think it is about time for NPC's, vendors, guards, etc.. to get some new outfits, emotes, and dialog.

 

Review seems spot on. It's nice to see someone write a review that isn't the usual MMORPG.com gushing over EVERY game. I was beginning to think they were incapable of giving a game anything less than an 8.0.

I think it's about time we get an actual sandbox MMO with some new, innovative features. Still waiting for that to materialize.